Articles – VIRED

Experience a collaborative dental surgery in virtual reality

VIREDteam — Sat, 26 Feb 2022 14:27:52 +0000

Virtual reality devices let dentists, surgeons, and their students or dental assistants dive into the virtual world and share an extraordinary educational experience.

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused disruptive and unprecedented changes in how we work and learn. Distance forces us to discover more efficient ways to communicate, collaborate and get ourselves educated while technology gives us the means to do it successfully.

As the dental industry enters in this new technological era, Virtual Reality (VR) finds a home in dentistry for both educational and clinical purposes.

With the help of VR technology dentists and dental surgeons who LIVE and WORK in different countries can collaborate on the same dental case in a virtual environment. At the same time, their students will be able to watch them operate the surgery, enjoy a 3D, 360-degree view of a projected digital scenery, learn and simulate procedures accurately.

“enjoy a fully customized 3D realistic virtual scenery with real depth feeling”

It is not about the future anymore. Technology is revolutionizing the way dentistry is practiced and how patients are going to take care of themselves in the future. Virtual reality is changing our whole attitude towards oral health.

But what exactly is meant under the term Virtual Reality? Let us explain.

With Virtual Reality (VR) you transport yourself in another time and space. Wearing the dedicated headset closes off the outside world, and -from your couch- you are transported to a totally new reality, a virtual one. In our case, this would be a VR dental surgery. You step into the shoes of a surgeon placing an implant while dental assistants help by your side. You can pick up 3d objects and move them around, move, feel and see the whole experience exactly as if it were real.

Even patients who wear a VR headset can visualize a calming landscape next to the sea while seated at the dentist’s chair to improve their experience. Anxiety, fear of pain, and stress will be replaced by positive feelings. What an impact on dentists working life!

But above all else, virtual reality is to be used as a powerful training and education tool. Surgeons can stream operations globally and allow medical students to actually be there using their VR device. VR training improves outcomes, enables collaboration, and reduces surgical errors & training time.

Undoubtedly it is the most promising educational experience with many benefits and we can’t wait to live it.

by Sofia Atsali

Incredible use of VR across a range of fields

VIREDteam — Sat, 26 Feb 2022 14:26:52 +0000

As the chief characteristic of VR technology is that it builds out a simulated environment and effectively tricks our brain into believing we are somewhere we are not, VR applies greatly to a variety of different industries. We may still hardly realize how useful VR can be but after reading this article there will be a clearer picture of its application in our lives.

1. VR in Sports

VR is revolutionizing the sports industry for players, coaches, and viewers. Coaches and players can use VR to train more efficiently across a range of sports, as they are able to watch and experience certain situations repeatedly and can improve each time. Essentially, it’s used as a training aid to help measure athletic performance and analyze technique. VR may also help injured athletes to improve their cognitive abilities, as it allows them to experience gameplay scenarios virtually.

2. VR in Training & Education

In some sectors, especially in dangerous environments, VR is used to train employees. For example, pilots use simulators in case they make a mistake, and aspiring doctors take advantage of virtual reality to avoid medical accidents. By connecting an array of distinctive technologies, VR technology provides a multisensory and three-dimensional environment that helps users become completely immersed in an artificial environment.

VR educational use extends to schools for teaching and learning situations. Students can interact with each other and within a three-dimensional environment. Virtual field trips, for example, to museums, tours of the solar system, and travel back in time to different eras are high-value experiences for a student.

3. VR in Medical Training & dental education

Implementing virtual technology into training health professionals is changing the future of education. Clinicians benefit from virtual hands-on experiences by reducing harm to live patients and learning efficiently. VR offers realistic, safe practices while providing feedback to the practitioner. Virtual patients allow surgeons to practice complex surgeries and students to develop skills that can later be applied in the real world.

“New and advanced technologies such as oculus virtual simulation systems provide unique capabilities for clinical training in medical academia”

Regarding dentistry, the potential advantages of VR for dental education are frequently discussed as a means to improve fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination within clinical settings. VR could also surmount the financial and creative challenges that are often involved with dentistry’s complex training.

In addition, VR technology presents a great opportunity to optimize costs, especially since health services are continuously under pressure with tight budgets.

4. Fashion & Shopping

A lesser-known use of VR is in fashion where it has actually been having quite a profound impact. Window shopping? Try on clothes? Redecoration of home? With VR, shoppers become completely immersed in an artificial environment!

Tommy Hilfiger, Coach, and Gap have already begun implementing VR in their business, offering a 360-degree experience of fashion shows and allowing customers to try on clothes virtually.

5. VR in Τourism

Escaping in a new reality. VR enables users to visit museums and historical sites virtually and make a hotel tour during the booking process. VR has also the potential to bring digital workers together in digital meetings and conferences.

6. VR in Military

Virtual simulators have now become the norm in the fields of aerospace and aviation. The military in the UK and the US have both adopted the use of virtual reality in their training as VR can transport a trainee into severaldifferent situations, places, and environments for a range of training purposes.

“Flight simulations, battlefield simulations, training, vehicle simulation, virtual boot camp”

VR is a completely immersive, visual, and sound-based experience, which can safely replicate dangerous training situations to prepare and train soldiers, without putting them at risk until they are ready for combat. Likewise, it can also be used to teach soldiers some softer skills, including communication with local civilians or international counterparts when out in the field.

As people in the developed world become immune to digital technology, or at the very least, are taking it for granted, VR is one of the remaining few innovations that can inspire us!

Virtual Reality: The most attention-grabbing experiential tool

VIREDteam — Sat, 26 Feb 2022 14:25:51 +0000

The amazing technology of Virtual Reality adds value to different aspects of our lives and releases unnumbered opportunities in a wide range of fields and environments! VR is known for transporting us to a fully customized 3D realistic virtual scenery with a real depth feeling. It is about an unforgettable experience that captures our attention, increases our interaction, and helps our brain form new connections more easily. Now, let’s have a closer look at the benefits of VR.

Benefits of VR

1. Positive impact on the surgeon and medical training

Virtual reality (VR), is now emerging as a viable training tool in the healthcare profession.

Because of VR’s interactive nature, medical & dental students benefit from virtual hands-on training, practicing surgeries and procedures avoiding the risk of making a mistake on real patients. VR offers a way to understand human anatomy in depth before treating live patients in a dental or dental hygiene educational setting.

Aside from creating realistic renditions of anatomical structures, simulators re-create all of the tactile sensations experienced during procedures. They provide accessories to supplement instruments for grasping and palpating tissues so that clinicians can truly feel while performing the procedures.

The power of learning by doing

Learning through hands-on application, rather than absorbing knowledge by listening or reading captures our attention. Experiential learning is immersive and hands-on, therefore it captures our attention and helps us grow our critical thinking, creativity, socio-emotional intelligence, and complex reasoning skills. A study conducted at the University of Chicago in 2015 showed that students who experience a science concept by doing experiments understood more and scored better on tests. With the use of brain scans, they found that hands-on training activates sensory and motor-related areas of the brain. One step further, the US National Training Laboratory found that retention rates for training through VR are 75% far above the 10% for reading-based learning and the 5%percent for lecture-style learning.

“VR is the most attention-grabbing experiential tool as it offers the closest experience to reality”

Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel, Washington University’s Professors claimed that active, experiential learning helps the brain form new connections more easily while Manolis Mavrikis, Director of the Education and Technology MA, in UCLS believes that technology is a natural ally for experiential learning with unique opportunities as it offers people ways to experience what they learn but in a safe and controlled environment. Source : Accenture

2. VR in events and meetings defines a new business era

VR has the potential to bring digital workers together in digital meetings and conferences with real-time event coverage. Workers won’t have to travel to make decisions and complete projects. For example, architects from across the globe can use virtual reality to evaluate designs.

Do you prefer attending cultural to business events?

With VR, no one will feel excluded from a big sports or music event due to lack of time or money as he can enjoy the same experience remotely with VR goggles, either for free or at a lesser cost.

Regarding the use of VR, you can find more information in our article “Incredible use of VR across a range of fields”

3. Positive impact on time, money, and environment

VR can save organizations time and money and make work more convenient. If there is no need to travel for work, the carbon footprint of our trips will be highly reduced. Even shopping will be less time-consuming with VR, as shoppers can try on clothes and shoes in a virtual shop.

4. Positive impact on Society & Mental Health

Virtual reality technology can provide a safe environment for patients to come into contact with things they fear, whilst remaining in a controlled and safe environment. This is just one of the ways VR can become a primary method for treating post-traumatic stress. Using VR exposure therapy, a person enters a re-enactment of a traumatic event in an attempt to come to terms with the event and heal. For example, some patients with anxiety find meditating using VR to be an effective method to manage stress reactivity and boost coping mechanisms. Virtual reality can also be particularly beneficial for students with special needs, such as autism, as it enhances the training of social skills. Read more on this subject here .

The VR technology is highlyprogressing!

VIREDteam — Sat, 26 Feb 2022 14:24:05 +0000

Part 2

VR’s recent advancements are impressive. Nowadays brands like Facebook, Google, Sony, HTC, Lenovo invest in new technologies and launch VR equipment for unforgetable VR experiences. Light headsets, comfortable, with an ease of setup and flexible promise to transfer us in exceptional VR environments where we will experience games, shopping, travel, education, work in a very immersive way.

As we have mentioned before in a previous article (με συνδεσμο που θα οδηγει στο αρθρο με τιτλο The history of VR is longer than you might think and its future brighter! Part1), Virtual Reality’s journey started back in 1838 with the invention of the first Stereoscope. In the mid-1980 Jaron Lanier developed VR’s equipment goggles and gloves and gave birth to the term “Virtual Reality”.

Even if the decade 1970-1980 was a crucial one for VR mainly due to haptic devices and optical advancements, nobody could have imagined what the new millennium would bring!

Milestones of Contemporary VR devices

In 2010 contemporary VR devices emerged with the design of the first prototype of the Oculus Rift. Facebook acquired Oculus for $2bn in 2014! Between 2014 and 2017 console-tethered (e.g. Sony’s VR headset for its PS4 console) and mobile-tethered (e.g. Samsung GearVR and Google Cardboard) headsets replaced the PC-tethered headsets (e.g. the HTC Vive).

Oculus Rift. Source: https://www.oculus.com/rift/

Apple could’ t stay inactive. It awarded the patent for a head-mounted display apparatus in 2015. In 2016 Sony PlayStation VR (PSVR) was released, and in 2017 Microsoft launched its VR-ready games console and headset “Xbox One X”.

2018: Facebook releases Oculus Go headset and optimizes its camera-loaded glasses for social VR

2018: Lenovo’s Mirage Solo is available. It is the first standalone headset running Google Daydream. Immersive VR experience without a separate PC or smartphone.

Lenovo Mirage Solo with Daydream. Source: lenovo.com

Untethered headsets Oculus Go, Lenovo Mirage Solo, and HTC Vive Focus transform VR into an independent platform!

2019: Sonny announces that it had sold more than four million PSVR headsets, while in

2021: According to PwC more than 85 million VR headsets will be in use in China

The future is to be seen with VR headsets!

Virtual Reality changes the art and entertainment industries and affects the way children play, people work, travel, shop, learn, co-operate and exercise. Supported by 5G networks, cloud-based VR gaming will increase by 2023.

“The VR market revenue is expected to swell to over $12 billion by 2024”

“66% of consumers are interested in VR shopping experiences”

Sony Playstation VR headset. Source https://www.playstation.com/el-gr/ps-vr/

VR headsets are going to become a popular toy for children as Mcdonald’s turned Happy Meal boxes into Happy Goggles. Kids not only are experiencing something meaningfully new, but they are also relating to technology in a fresh way.

“We try to bring education to our Happy Meals, and the answer was a kind of staring us in the face,” says Jeff Jackett, marketing director for McDonald’s Sweden. Since 2016, Coca-Cola has also created its Virtual Reality Viewer, made from recycled cardboard. More and more tech companies discover ways to incorporate VR into exercise activities in order to enhance physical activity.

Considering these facts, it becomes more clear why we expect the VR market revenue to swell to over $12 billion by 2024!

“VR revolutionizes different industries from healthcare to on-the-job
training & keeps adding value to modern life”

According to statista.com, the industry is growing at a fast pace, with the Global VR market size projected to increase from less than five billion U.S. dollars in 2021 to more than 12 billion U.S. dollars by 2024, while a report by Global Industry Analysts concluded that, virtual technology in the medical profession would have reached the $3.8 billion by 2020.

Photo: statista.com

Given this expansion, virtual technology will further transform the healthcare industry. Applications will range from training healthcare professionals to diagnosing and treating various conditions. Actually, we will experience the use of VR in a range of industries, like sports, education, military, tourism, fashion, and business. VR’s future is very prominent

The history of VR is longer than you might think and its future brighter!

VIREDteam — Sat, 26 Feb 2022 14:18:29 +0000

Part1

It seems so wired that today’s Virtual Reality technologies are built upon ideas that date back to the 1800s when the first Stereoscope, using twin mirrors to project a single image was invented. Since then VR technology has made a lot of stunning improvements. Especially, during the last six decades, pioneering inventors paved the way for the low-cost, high-quality devices that VR uses nowadays.

Nobody could have imaginedVR’s magical journey back in 1968 when the first VR head-mounted display (HMD) system was invented by scientist Ivan Sutherland and his student Bob Sproull. Some years later, mid-1980s, the term “Virtual Reality” was born by Jaron Lanier, founder of VPL Research, who developed the gear, including goggles and gloves, needed to experience what he called “virtual reality.”

Undoubtedly, a crucial phase for Virtual Reality was the decade 1970-1980. Optical advances ran parallel to projects that worked on haptic devices and other instruments that would allow us to move around in the virtual space.

Virtual Reality’s Milestones

1838: Invention of the first Stereoscope, using twin mirrors to project a single image.

1939: Stereoscope’s development into the View-Master. Patent and production till today.

1956: Sensorama, invented by Morton Heilig. The Sensorama experience simulated a real city environment of “riding” on a motorcycle. It let you see the road, hear the engine, feel the vibration, and smell. Morton Heilig’s background was in the Hollywood motion picture industry. He wanted to see how people could feel like they were “in” the movie.

1960: Telesphere Mask, a head-mounted display device, patented also by Morton Heilig.

1965: The Ultimate Display, invented by Ivan Sutherland. It was a head-mounted device that he suggested would serve as a “window into a virtual world.”

1970-1980: In the mid-1980s, the Virtual Interface Environment Workstation (VIEW) system at NASA Ames Research Center combined a head-mounted device with gloves to enable haptic interaction.

The years that followed after 1980 will shape the future of VR and shortly anyone could come on VR’s magical board!

Oculus Quest 2, VR headset. Source: https://www.oculus.com/quest-2/